Colorado School of Mines has some of the highest-performing brains in the country — even besting the brainiacs at Harvard — according to an analysis of more than 75,000 college students’ scores in the online Lumosity Fit Test brain games.

The Golden-based institution ranked fourth in the nation when brain training program Lumosity analyzed students’ game results from 461 colleges. The games dabbled in mental abilities like attention, memory, processing speed and flexibility, according to a Lumosity news release.

Colorado School of Mines came in behind Dartmouth College, Carnegie Mellon University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but sat one ranking above Harvard University.

“Other college rankings, like the ones in U.S. News & World Report, are based on factors ranging from academic performance to alumni giving and financial resources,” said Bob Schafer, Ph.D., the vice president of research at Lumosity. “What’s truly unique about the Lumosity rankings is our ability to focus instead on a student population’s core cognitive abilities. It turns out that performance on these games is strongly correlated with standardized test scores, and many schools at the top of the list won’t surprise you. But there are also a handful of schools that you might not expect. The student bodies of these schools have memory, speed, attention and flexibility skills that make them stand out.”

The analysis was restricted to Lumosity users who finished the program’s three-game fit test and fell between the ages of 17 and 24 as of August 2017, the news release said. To be included in the analysis, users had to register with the program using a .edu email address or connect to Lumosity through an IP address associated with a college or university during the 2017-2018 academic year.

The study also included only institutions with at least 50 users who met the criteria.

Colorado School of Mines ranked highest out of all the colleges in a game called “Train of Thought” that exercises attention and planning skills.

Elizabeth Hernandez is a Denver Post reporter covering breaking news and a little bit of everything else, too. A former education reporter at both The Post and Boulder Daily Camera, Elizabeth is passionate about using her platform to tell the stories of underrepresented Coloradans in an accurate, compassionate, engaging manner. She started at The Denver Post as an intern in 2014 and just kept coming to work until they hired her.

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